XP home won't boot up

After attempting to fix a crash issue with some software, I was advised to uninstall the Hotfix KB824141, however, the uninstaller froze part way through, and now XP will not boot back up. I don't have Xp discs as the OS came pre-installed, and the recovery discs I do have state that all data will be lost if I use them, but as I have loads of files, photos etc that are not backed up, I don't particularly want to do this. I have got as far as the start up screen which gives the option to load in safe mode etc, but that is as far as it goes, and i can't start in any mode. If i try some of them I get a list of files on the screen, but boot stops with the last filename ending mup.sys. I have downloaded the 6 windows Xp boot disks from microsoft, but I am unsure whether to use them, as it states on the website that I will also need the Xp install cd. Can anyone suggest another way to get windows to load?

After attempting to fix a crash issue with some software, I was advised to uninstall the Hotfix KB824141, however, the uninstaller froze part way through, and now XP will not boot back up. I don't have Xp discs as the OS came pre-installed, and the recovery discs I do have state that all data will be lost if I use them, but as I have loads of files, photos etc that are not backed up, I don't particularly want to do this. I have got as far as the start up screen which gives the option to load in safe mode etc, but that is as far as it goes, and i can't start in any mode. If i try some of them I get a list of files on the screen, but boot stops with the last filename ending mup.sys. I have downloaded the 6 windows Xp boot disks from microsoft, but I am unsure whether to use them, as it states on the website that I will also need the Xp install cd. Can anyone suggest another way to get windows to load?

I managed to get windows to boot up properly by borrowing a copy of an install cd, but now I seem to have some major registry problems: I can't connect to the internet, and am getting the message Error 711: the remote access server managercould not start; I can't run system restore (I get the message 'the procedure entry point GetIUMS could not be located in the dynamic link library MSDART.dll), and when I try to run other applications I get all sorts of error messages saying that there are .dll files which cannot be located in the dynamic link library.

I have managed to back up all my critical data; am I going to have to do a re-format?

If I were you, I would backup all needed/wanted files from the system and go to a clean install of the operating system either by using the Windows XP disks or your system's restore disks. When an install of Windows gets botched, the best solution is usually to just get a clean slate.